The Johns Hopkins University will once again require undergraduate students to submit standardized test scores as part of the application process.
Students applying for the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences and the Whiting School of Engineering will have to submit SAT or ACT scores beginning with those seeking admission for the fall 2026 semester, the university said on Friday. The policy change does not affect The Peabody Institute, which offers undergraduate degrees in music and fine arts.
Students applying for fall 2025 admission are encouraged, but not required, to submit test scores.
Johns Hopkins was among many universities nationwide that stopped requiring standardized test scores during the early years of the COVID-19 pandemic. Hopkins announced a “test-optional” policy in June 2020. The policy was extended in February 2022, according to a university spokesperson.
Test scores are an “imperfect” measure, according to a review published by Hopkins, but “stand out as a significant quantitative metric to assess the likelihood of students’ academic success” at the university.
“Test scores and GPA are just two components of the overall process, considered in context with multiple other factors, including an applicant’s circumstances and environment,” the spokesperson said in an email.
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Some other institutions, like Yale University, have also recently announced they will once again require standardized test scores.
The University System of Maryland remains test optional, according to a spokesperson for the system. However, that does mean individual schools within the statewide system could choose to require test scores while others do not, spokesperson Mike Lurie confirmed in an email.
Towson University, for example, is “permanently test-optional” while the University of Maryland, College Park, says it is test optional through “the Spring and Fall 2025 application cycles.”
Undergraduate students at Hopkins who submitted test scores over the last couple years tend to perform better in both their first and second years, the review found, even when controlling for fields of study and demographic data.
The university also said it has evidence that between 2021-2023, some first-generation students, limited income students and students from underrepresented groups suppressed their test scores during the application process, even if those scores were high.
“The past three years under a test-optional policy have helped refine our understanding of the value of standardized testing in the admissions process and have shown that these tests provide relevant information about applicants,” the review says.
